source - created in canva pro

🤶🎅🎄One week til Christmas 🎄🎅🤶

I really do need to get my head in the game IRL with gifts for this year!!! I was starting to feel bad haha, but my kids' little lists keep changing and given I received a late complete change from my eldest son 2 days ago, I am actually quite grateful that I haven't really got going yet ... It's very unusual for me as I normally have Christmas presents under wraps by now!!! This year, it's going to be a race to Christmas Eve lols, but my plan is to enjoy the online shopping and click and collect facilities, this weekend, and only venture into the shops where I have no option. My kids have been quite sensible and have asked for just a few things that they would really like to receive. I guess that is what happens as they get older. What they are most looking forward to is having a whole family sleepover at my Dad and Sister's place on Christmas Eve, and seeing their cousins on Christmas day 💗

But for now...

Welcome to the 5th monthly edition of my contest to Pay it Forward. It's a contest with a focus on brand new Hivers although anyone can enter🙏. This month the 250 POB delegation is reserved for a brand new Hiver who has been here for less than 3 full calendar months... but the contest and the rest of the prizes, are open to everyone 😊🤗

As it's Christmas, I thought I'd do something different again 😂

source - canva pro library

So one of the things synonymous with Christmas is the bright and colourful Christmas Cracker. Each Christmas you will find these iconic tokens of delight, wrapped in paper and foil decor, littered across the dining table. Each person will get their own cracker and pull it with the person next to them or across the table from them until it splits in half with a loud crack or bang and out will fall a small novelty gift, a paper crown, and a festive joke. Traditionally, the contents go to the person on whose side of the cracker, the contents fall, although most people ensure that everyone gets something in the end. In the same way, I'll be spreading some cheer with a slice of !PIZZA), a breath of !ALIVE, a dash of laughter !LOLZ, or a little !LUV by calling on the bots to visit in the comments during the week.

Fun fact:

The tradition of pulling Christmas crackers originated in the mid-1800s with a London sweet maker, Tom Smith who, inspired on a visit to Paris, by the French paper-wrapped 'bon-bon' sweets, decided to make his own. He came up with the idea to place a gunpowder strip inside the wrapped paper exterior so that they opened with a 'bang' and introduced this concept to both his toy and sweet range, adding the idea of a festive joke into the mix too. source

As you might have guessed, the reason for talking about Christmas Crackers in this post is because this is the theme of this month's contest ...and ... here are the contest rules:

We are going to pretend we are all sat at the Christmas table together, having Christmas dinner, and to join in the festive fun, you need to do 5 simple things, and include all 5 of them in a single comment to the post below to be in with a chance to win one of the listed prizes... as you will see, they are all designed to be fairly quick to do and hopefully you will find it fun too!

1. Share your favourite Christmas Cracker Joke. If you don't have one ... go ask your search engine or online AI bot 😂, or make one up (even better! hehe).

2. Write an original Christmas story using 10 words or less (entries will be checked for originality)

3. Find a !gif or two that you think reflects an aspect of your personality, in any way shape, or form, and share it here. Don't explain it... here is a link to Giphy to help you out
   here to Tenor. 👊

4. Tag 3 or more people to come and join the Christmas 'table' and share in the fun! If you can tag a new Hiver too, that would be awesome!

5. Engage with at least one other Hiver 'at the table' (in the comments), although there is no upward limit to engagement😁

You can enter more than once if you want to, but each entry comment must satisfy the 5 requirements.

I'll start us off with the first comment (...and I'll engage once we have a few entries, lol):

1

What do you call Santa's little helpers?
Subordinate clauses! source

2

To Santa ...

He smiled, swigged, crunched; unwrapping gifts of innocence.

3

via Giphy

via Tenor

Tagging a cross-section of peeps to start us off - Anyone fancy joining us at the fun table, hehe, and taking part? It's a BEEEG table lols ...

@liftslikealady, @khoola, @princessj190, @thealbytross, @peaq, @consciouscat, @doziekash, @blezyn, @deraaa, @merit.ahama, @amberkashif, @davidbright, @khaleesii, @ayesha-malik, @chincoculbert, @wrestlingdesires, @dreemsteem, @penderis, @calumam, @flamistan, @beeber, @agreste, @kaerpediem, @snook, @shadowspub, @jaxsonmurph, @bluefinstudios, @quirky.countess, @kemmyb, @kenechukwu97, @mcyusuf @mezume, @scholaris, @nonsowrites, @wil.metcalfe, @dibblers.dabs, @fionasfavourites, @thekittygirl

The contest ends on Christmas morning when the post payout period ends. I'm looking forward to some fun. I hope you are too 😍

Prizes will be awarded on the following basis:

All entries will be entered into random.org and I will let the randomiser rearrange the order for us.

Then I will have a list of Christmas Cracker hits and misses where I will pop all the prizes (excluding the delegation) into the random.org randomiser, with all the extra slots being a Christmas Cracker 'miss', and hit the randomiser button.

Finally, I will line the two lists up together to see which people occupy the positions where the prizes are hiding (I won't even know until this is done hehe). I will post a screen shot of both randomised lists for transparency.

🎄😊🎄.

There will be one delegation prize, and as my favourite number is 17, I have decided that there will be:

17 Random Cracker Prizes

1 x 250 POB delegation for 1 month (This will be delegated to the highest-ranked NEW HIVER after the randomiser is run)

Balance of Prizes will be allocated as per the above explained methodology

5 x 2 Hive SBI units

5 x 10 Liquid POB

2 x 20 PIZZA (20 PIZZA is the minimum required to enable one to call the PIZZA bot)

2 x 10 LUV (10 LUV is the minimum required to enable one to call the LUV bot)

1 x 8 LOLZ (8 LOLZ is the minimum required to enable one to call the LOLZ bot)

1 x 10,000 STARBITS (Rising Star currency)

1 x 500 DEC (Splinterlands currency)

🎄🎅🤶 I hope we get lots of people at the table 🤶🎅🎄

If the post generates a surplus of rewards over the official listed prizes, then I will add more prizes to the mix before I draw. 😍🙏👊